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The Marine Corps has said it desperately needs a new type of ship called Light Amphibious Warships that can quickly land on Western Pacific beaches to deliver troops and missile-launching vehicles.
This requirement includes transporting its new Marine Littoral Regiment, the first of which will soon be activated at Kaneohe Bay as part of a sweeping Corps reorganization to better deter China.
The army has a sizable navy — a surprise to many — including four large ocean-going logistics support ships at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam that can conduct beach landings with troops and vehicles.
Although the military earned a reputation for powering personal watercraft during World War II, with today’s budget constraints, it may no longer be able to afford to maintain this role.
The Navy, meanwhile, may not be able to afford as many light amphibious warfare ships as the Marines want.
This is an opportunity, some would say today.
In 2020, Navy and Marine Corps officers wrote in an opinion piece that some of the Army’s craft – logistics support ships and landing craft – should be transferred to the Navy or in the Marine Corps.
Getting possession of two types of Army watercraft is a “solution on a silver platter,” Navy Captain Walker Mills and Navy Lieutenant Joseph Hanacek wrote on DefenseNews.com.
With budget concerns only mounting for fiscal year 2023, a transfer of ships from the Army to the Marine Corps should be seriously considered, said Bryan Clark, director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute. .
“I think they (the Marines) are going to have to take a closer look at the Army watercraft, and I think those four in Hawaii are a perfect fit for part of their problem,” Clark said during a recent telephone interview.
The Army said its 2020 personal watercraft fleet consisted of 134 vessels, but that fleet “is being divested and will be downsized and modernized with new systems by 2026.” All craft were retired from the Army Reserve in 2019.
New replacement craft being considered by the military include the maneuver support ships (Next) and (Light).
Clark said personal watercraft didn’t really fall under the army’s six modernization priorities, the first of which is long-range precision firepower to counter Russia and China.
But the Army Navy “aligns with the idea of the Army, ‘Well, we want to be relevant in the Pacific.’ So that’s part of the friction inside the military right now where … they really want to be relevant in the Pacific theater, so they’re investing in certain capabilities that are relevant to the Pacific,” he said .
“So they’re really torn,” Clark added, especially with budget constraints for fiscal year 2023. just don’t think the military will be able to pay for it.
The Pentagon could transfer the Army watercraft to the Marines, he said.
In recent years, the Army has considered selling some of its craft, including the Hickam-based logistics support ship SSGT Robert T. Kuroda (LSV-7), one of the most successful in its fleet. The ship is named after a Honolulu resident and Medal of Honor recipient who advanced on two machine gun emplacement near Bruyeres, France in 1944, killing several enemy soldiers before being shot down by a gunner. elite.
The Kuroda class, at 314 feet, is a modernization over the Besson-class LSVs, which are 40 feet shorter, according to the Army. LSV-7 and 8, MG Robert Smalls, also stationed at Hickam, have a pointed bow that allows for better seakeeping as well as a 12,440 square foot cargo deck.
Two of the Besson class, General Brehon B. Somervell (LSV-3) and Lt. William B. Bunker (LSV-4), are also based at Hickam.
“In this predominantly maritime area of responsibility, the Army’s watercraft systems serve as a force multiplier for the Army and the joint force,” said Maj. Gen. David Wilson, commander of 8th Theater Sustainment Command. in Oahu, owner of the personal watercraft. an email.
Army watercraft “are a strategic capability in the Army’s inventory and will be essential to enable joint force in times of crisis, competition and conflict,” Wilson said.
ASKED ABOUT the future of LSVs at Hickam, Wilson said: “The plan for where LSVs will stay and should be depends on several variables; what I can tell you with certainty right now is that we will maintain LSVs in Hawaii.
Eight LSVs are in Army inventory. The TheDrive.com website reported in July that the General Services Administration was auctioning off nine 73-foot Army Mechanized Landing Craft and eight 174-foot Landing Craft Utility Vessels.
The Navy and Marine Corps, meanwhile, are pursuing 24 to 35 light amphibious warfare ships to land at least 75 Marines on remote islands where they could target enemy ships with naval strike missiles or relay that information to other ships. other shooters. The ships would be 200 to 400 feet in length.
Clark said the Marines “run into a lot of roadblocks with the Navy,” which “wants to build something more resilient.”
This makes ships more expensive and possibly fewer in number.
The Marine Corps doesn’t want to give up on the idea, but now “is looking at alternatives to the light amphibious warfare ship,” he said.
One option being considered is to use the navy’s fast but relatively lightly armored littoral combat ships, but “they can’t really stop on the beach like the army craft can,” Clark said.
He said he could see littoral combat ships and large navy amphibious ships used to ferry marines across the open ocean with army watercraft repurposed as navy or marine corps ships. and transferred to Guam, the Philippines or Japan for internal movement.
The Marine Corps already relies on the capability of Army watercraft by using them in Hawaii and elsewhere to deliver equipment ashore during exercises.
“The Marine Corps requires coast-to-coast mobility in the littorals and detailed analysis has led the Navy to pursue a purpose-built light amphibious warfare vessel,” Marine Corps Forces Pacific said in an email.
Army watercraft “certainly provide complementary capability and marine units routinely use army watercraft for timely lifting exercises around the world,” the Oahu-based command said. “Indo-Pacific intra-theater ocean transport is a high demand capability – we can’t have too much of it.”
The Corps added that it “will continue to work with the Navy to develop the (light amphibious warfare vessel) while the Army will continue to plan and execute surface mobility with its watercraft program.”
The Army in Hawaii continues to hone its own maritime skills, transporting 101 Schofield infantry with 15 combat vehicles in October on a logistics support ship from Oahu to the island of Hawaii – a 20-hour voyage. The military said the troop transport was an “unprecedented mission” for the LSV-3.
The Marines “are faced with this challenge of moving the Marines, and with (the new coastal marine regiments), they have to find a solution that works,” Clark said.
In the short term, there really isn’t enough money to get the light amphibious warfare ships that the Marines want, “and they’re going to have to work with the military. I think one thing the (Department of Defense) might have to do is find some sort of reconciliation to say, ‘Okay, we’re going to transfer a lot of this watercraft portfolio from the Army to the Marines .”
Clark thinks that might be a way forward “just because budget constraints are such that I think there are a lot of people (in the Secretary of Defense’s office) looking for ways to make the Army is focused on its tenders in the European theater, and that’s one element that would be part of that.
